What is your role within ARK? 

As Assistant Survey Manager, I provide support to the ARK survey team, especially for our Young Life and Times and Kids' Life and Times surveys. I also work on creative communication and dissemination of research findings through events, publications and various forms of media. Thirdly, as an environmental social scientist, I bring an environmental angle to ARK’s work, helping to frame Northern Ireland, and our work on and in it, as an interconnected social-ecological system.

What do you most enjoy about your role in ARK?

I enjoy having a front row seat to how Northern Ireland is changing. For instance, analysing the views of young people, and seeing how this cohort is becoming more diverse in its makeup and outlook, is fascinating. Similarly, adding an environmental dimension to our social policy work, as well as a social dimension to others’ environmental work, reminds me of how interconnected everything is, in Northern Ireland and beyond. Lastly, I enjoy being creative and turning research results into inspiring outputs that make people stop and think, and maybe even smile.

As Assistant Survey Manager in ARK, what is the focus of your research?

As an environmental social scientist, I study human relationships with the natural world, rather than nature itself. And of all of the ways we mediate this relationship, conservation and agriculture fascinate me most. Within this very broad field, I have two main interests. One is how social and community farming connect society with farming and farming with society. The other is how large carnivores – previously with snow leopards in Nepal and now, potentially, with lynx and wolves in these islands – share landscapes with people and their livestock.

Find out more about Dr Hanson’s work: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/jonny-hanson